


Like Before

by bricoleur10



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Past Sort of Non-Con, M/M, Male Slash, Post-Series, Repressed Emotions, Very Brief Mention of Thoughts of Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-09
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-28 18:34:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2742776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bricoleur10/pseuds/bricoleur10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what happens when the past doesn't stay in the past. Post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Before

It’s when you start to wonder if you were ever really an artist at all that you truly get worried. 

You and Brian had made promises to each other this time around. Not vows. You’d never call them that – neither would he. But promises. Rules. Agreements. Telling each other about the important stuff…that was a big one. 

The next morning he’s sitting at the kitchen island drinking coffee in his suit. He looks up when you walk into the room. His eyes are surprised, maybe a little scared. It occurs to you that they’ve been that way for a while now. Always a little scared.

He’d known before you had, that there was something to worry about. 

You stop in your tracks. You hadn’t planned this out, but it happens anyway. 

“I think I’m depressed.” 

His eyes widen, and then narrow. His eyebrows get tight. There’s silence for a long time. You figure out you’re not done talking. 

“I can’t draw.” He looks almost relieved, but you can’t let him stay there. “And I don’t want to anymore.” 

“What do you need?” He asks like you should know. You shrug. 

He doesn’t go to work that day. 

\--

The psychiatrist gives you antidepressants, but you don’t want to take them. 

“They’ll help.” Brian whispers this in the dark that night. The unfilled script is lying on the nightstand. 

“What if they don’t?” Because that’s what you’re really afraid of. 

“Then we’ll do something else.” 

You nod, and don’t ask him what. You don’t think he knows. 

\--

They do help, a little. 

You stop thinking about how pointless everything is, how much better off everyone was without you. 

You don’t call it suicidal. Neither does your shrink. But you both know. 

The pills make you a little more stable. Make you feel a little less like you’re falling apart. 

But you’re still in pieces, and you still don’t know why.

\--

“Can we take a vacation?” You ask him a few months later, curled into his side and trying not to cry. “I think I want…It want to get out of Pittsburgh for a little while.” 

He breathes a deep sigh against the top of your head. You think he’s happy to have something to do – besides pay doctor bills and make sure you’re taking your meds on schedule.

“Whatever you need, Justin.” 

He doesn’t call you sunshine anymore. 

\--

The Bahamas are warm and beautiful and amazing. 

You don’t go sightseeing. You don’t do a lot of things that one typically does on a vacation like this. But you do spend an inordinate amount of time on the beach. 

The sand and sun and water combine to make you feel…better. You stick close to Brian, but you don’t cling like you have been. You stay on your meds. 

On the fourth day you buy a sketchbook. Brian fucks you slow and hard that night. You come twice and tell him you love him.

On the ninth day you start drawing again. Brian lets you fuck him that night. He rolls over and seems to really want it. He wants you to take it, you realize. You do. You make it last a long time, and he’s shaking and begging long before you push into him. He never tries to take control.

\-- 

Going home is better than you thought it would be. You miss the sun and the freedom of your time away, but you know that Brian needs to work – and not just for the money, though that’s a big part of it.   
You’ve always felt like a nine-to-five job, an office, that much routine would kill you. You’d rather be free and broke than rich and confined. For Brian it’s different, and you realize on the plane ride back that he’d do anything, work any job he could find, so long as he could always have money. 

And it’s not about his lifestyle and the things he buys, at least not entirely. To Brian, being free is being rich. He needs money to feel like he has control over his life, and without control Brian is lost. You remember that from the months right after Stockwell. 

And you get that now. 

\--

You purchase some studio space. 

Brian finds out about it from your mother, and comes home that night with worried eyes and a wrinkled forehead. 

You shrug. “I have to try.” 

He kisses you for a long time. 

\--

The first canvas you paint is for shit. 

The second isn’t much better. 

You schedule two extra therapy sessions and Brian holds you tight, long after the fucking is done. 

He’s worried that you’ll never get back to where you were before.

\--

“Were you happy in New York?” Your shrink asks one day, after you tell him that you’ve started a fifth canvas and you actually don’t hate what it’s becoming. 

You tilt your head to the side and stare at him like you don’t understand. 

But he knows you by now, and he knows how you stall. 

You take a deep breath. “I painted because I had to.” 

He nods. “That’s not what I asked.” 

“I missed Brian.” 

“Still not what I want to know.” 

You look out the window and don’t say anything until the session is over.

\--

Brian has to go out of town for work. He’ll be gone for eight days, and he’s so worried about leaving you alone that he begs you to go with him. 

You almost say yes, because Brian so rarely begs for anything that you know how much this means to him. In fact, you do say yes. It’s your therapist who puts his foot down. 

You need the time alone, apparently, to learn how to…you’re not sure. You stop listening. 

Brian agrees with anything the doctor says, but he tells you that night that if you really want to go, or that if you want him to stay, then that’s what will happen. 

You almost take him up on it, but in the end you shake your head and say the doc’s probably right. You need to learn how to live again. 

\--

The second full day that Brian is gone you run into Ethan Gold outside of a Walmart. 

He talks on and on about his tour dates and his agent and how he’s only in town visiting his parents. He mentions having seen a few of your pieces in galleries in downtown New York. He asks if you’re seeing anyone. When you say Brian he starts on this little spiel. You tune him out, but not just because you don’t want to hear what he’s saying. 

You interrupt him mid-sentence a few minutes later. 

“When we were living together, did I ever go out clubbing?” 

Ethan looks at you like you’re insane, but he answers anyway. “Only once.” His eyes get even tinier than they are naturally. “That I know of.” 

You tell him to go on. He acts pissed off. “What the hell do you want to hear about that for, Justin? You were there. You came home all bruised up. You said some guy you were dancing with got handsy. You didn’t go back to the clubs until you got back together with him. Which, if you ask me, if proof enough that Kinney is a-”

You stop listening again. 

\--

You call Brett Keller the next day. After the usual exchange of pleasantries, and a perfunctory update on the Rage comic, you ask him about a party you’d gone to out in LA with him. He laughs when he remembers what you’re talking about and says, “That leather fest? I don’t know what the fuck we were thinking, going to that. Totally not my scene. Pretty wild night, though, right?” 

You have to agree, because now that you’re thinking about it, really thinking about it, you remember every detail.

\--

“I didn’t block it out, exactly,” you tell your shrink the next day. “I mean, it’s not like remembering it was a surprise or anything. It’s more like…I hadn’t thought about it at all. Ever.”

“And these were all events…” your shrink seems deeply troubled, “…where you were taken advantage of, sexually?” 

It takes you a second to really understand what he’s asking, and you balk. “No.” You shake your head. “No. Not like that.”

“Then like what?” 

“Things got out of hand, I guess,” you shrug. “Not really bad, or anything.” You think about it. You try to see it like Brian would. “Okay, maybe pretty bad sometimes.” You concede. “But not, like, police report, trip to the ER, victimization survey bad. Just…not good.” 

“Is there anything else you haven’t been remembering?” 

You’d felt good for a while, putting the pieces together like you had, but that question totally throws you. 

“I…” 

Your doctor takes a deep breath and leans back. “I think maybe you’re ready to talk.” 

\--

Brian comes home two days early because you hadn’t been answering your cell phone. You feel guilty for a minute, and then you’re just glad to see him. 

After the requisite hug, then fuck, then lecture, then second fuck, you share a joint while lying in bed. 

“Apparently I don’t deal with things.” 

Brian gives you the strangest look. “I thought that was my M.O.” 

You laugh. “The doc blames my parents and society.” I take a drag. “And brain chemistry a little. And prom. I was happy to have another thing to pin on Craig, though, so I kinda stopped listening after the first one.” 

“There are some blanks in there you’re gonna have to fill in.” 

“More than you know.” 

He gives you this look. It’s full of this kind of intense fear that you only see on people who truly loves you. 

“Justin…” 

You smile – you’re tired already, yeah, but also happier than you’ve been in a long time. 

“Did I ever tell you why I quit working for the Sap?” 

It takes you a while to get Brian to the same place you are – that happy one. But eventually you do. After you tell him about Gary, and that guy at Babylon while you were with Ethan, and some of the stuff you and Cody had done, and that party in LA that hadn’t ended great, and the orgy in New York. 

After you’ve watched him cry and scream and throw things. After he’s yelled at you. After he’s called the doctor himself. After he scheduled that MRI with your neurologist. 

Once all that is done he gets to where you are. 

\--

There’s no like it was before. 

That’s a fallacy. You see that now. There’s only better, and next, and moving forward. 

But that’s okay.

Now is so much better than it used to be.


End file.
